Molly Weasley
by createadisaster
Summary: This is a little fic about Molly Weasley, and Sirius and Remus, and it's a little sweet and a little sad. Set during OOTP.


It isn't as though she isn't a compassionate, loving, intelligent woman. She is. She always has been. Molly Weasley has the best intentions. She has a good heart and a kind soul and she is a talented witch. She loves all her children, including the ones that she hadn't actually birthed, and she takes good care of the members of the Order.

All that being said, you absolutely loathe her most of the time.

And you feel terrible about it, truly. She hasn't done anything to deserve it, not really. Molly has never been a bad person. She's never treated you poorly.

But you hate the way she talks to Sirius. Like he's a liability and an annoyance. He is reckless, yes, and you worry yourself sick over it. But you're afraid for his sake and yours, because if you lose him then you lose your heart all over again, and you just got it back. Molly, on the other hand, is afraid for everyone else, and convinced that somehow Sirius will get them all killed.

She still looks at him like he was guilty, like he was a murderer, like everything the papers had said when it happened was true and it made your insides twist into knots because none of it was true, it had never been true.

She looks at him as though he is a threat. Like he scares her. And you want to shake her. He is not scary. Sirius Black is wonderfully stubborn and fearfully impulsive, but not _scary. _Not anything to be truly frightened of. You are frightened of losing him. You are not frightened of him.

He could be dangerous, and you know that. And he knows that. But he doesn't want to be, he doesn't like to be. You've seen him at his best and his worst, and you love him no matter what, and Molly Weasley has newspaper clippings from over a decade ago, not tears and kisses and blood.

You know he blames himself for all that went wrong. You tell her that once, as gently as you could manage. "It wasn't his fault," you say to her, and you're almost proud that your voice stays steady.

And she looks at you with wide eyes, like she doesn't know, and says in that mother hen way she has, "Remus, dear, I haven't the slightest what you mean."

"Sirius," you say, and her eyes flash with understanding for a moment but she turns her back on you and goes right back to bustling around the kitchen. You don't say anything else, just walk out of the room and you find him standing there, just _looking_ at you and you don't even get a chance to speak before he kisses you.

"I love you," he murmurs into your ear a moment later, and you nod and your arms go around his waist and he's smaller than he used to be, all skin and bone now, but you just hold him tighter for it and you fit together like you'd never been apart.

There are little things. You sit down at the kitchen table one day to find him playing with a fork, and you raise your eyebrows at him. "It's different," he says like it's supposed to clarify why he's waving a fork around, and then he pulls another out of the drawer and brings them both over to show you. They are, you have to concede, different forks.

"I don't know how it got mixed in with the rest of the flatware," he explains, and you still don't understand but he looks happy, like he's found a new mystery, and so you smile at him and he smiles back and for a moment things are okay.

He comes up with increasingly strange explanations for the Mystery Fork as time goes by, and every day you find him coming up with a new one, and they make you laugh, and he kisses you, and you like the days when it's just you and him in the house. You have to leave a lot, and your heart hurts to think of him alone there, but when you're together its okay.

"What if," he suggests one day, "this mysterious fork was sent to us by the gods? And it's a sign?"

You grin at that one. "What sort of sign?" You have to ask. You miss these little insights into the jumbled up brilliance that is this madman's head. You cherish the ones you get.

"Something involving nudity and my kitchen table, I think," he tells you with a devilish smirk, and the fork is forgotten as he crosses the room to kiss you.

Weeks pass, and his explanations for the fork grow more and more elaborate, and they make you laugh every time. "What if it's a symbol from Minnie?" he asks, looking at you with merriment in those gray eyes. "What if it's a reminder of the love we have not forgotten? She's telling me that although we hit a _fork _in the road and had to go separate directions, one day we will fork again!"

"You're too old to imagine forking Minerva anymore, my dear," you tell him fondly, flicking through today's _Prophet _before deciding that, as always, it's worthless, and you toss it on the table.

"Not to mention too gay," he agrees. "What a pity."

Molly has not really spoken to Sirius in a few weeks, not that you've seen at least, and you can't say you miss it. Things have been fairly quiet. People come and go, but Sirius is a constant, and every time you wake up next to him you have to take a second to remember that this is real and he is yours again.

But then things shift.

It starts with the fork. He is rambling about something involving a war of unicorns, proposing a new way to explain this mysterious piece of silverware that made its way into his kitchen, and Molly is moving around the kitchen in a flurry, getting ready for a large dinner. "Don't be silly, dear, it's one of mine," she explains, and plucks it from his hand, and it wasn't malicious in the slightest but you just see it as taking away something that consistently made him happy, and you hate her for it.

And then it gets worse.

"Who else has he got?" she snaps at him one day, and Sirius sounds angry when he answers but you know he's not, that he's hurt and sad and lonely and you just want to kiss him until he is reminded just how much he's worth.

Harry does have Sirius. And he's got you, and every now and then Sirius will mention that once this is all over, Harry can come live with him, and you too, because you have your own flat but you haven't been there in weeks. There's a dresser in Sirius's room just for you, and a desk on the second floor, and you stay here with him because why would you want to be anywhere else?

Molly comments on that, too. There are nights where you get up at the same time and she says "we really do need to clear out a room for you if you stay here so often" because Molly stays late most nights, most people stay late most nights, and she notices that you just stay, and she acts like it's something else she should add to her to-do list.

"He has a room," Sirius says one night, and your fingers curl around the back of his neck, with his silky hair falling over them, and you realize that you think of this place as home because you think of Sirius as home.

Molly stays quiet after that. For a little while.

One day she suggests that you and Tonks have been friendly as of late. "I like her," you agree, perhaps foolishly, because her next words are not what you expect.

"Why don't you ask her out?" she offers, and you just stare at her for what must be at least a full minute before you can come up with a coherent response.

"I'm not looking for a girl," is the one you go with, and she makes a disapproving noise.

"I worry about you, though," she tells you, and you frown. "Isn't it time to settle down? Start a family?"

You can't do much but stare at her for that one. "I am settled down," you say slowly, because you _are._ You and Sirius are the picture of domesticity. Beyond that, the logistics of starting a family at this time are so utterly lacking that you can't quite wrap your head around it.

"Oh, Remus," Molly says, looking at you sympathetically, "I know you don't want to hurt his feelings, but- you aren't _really_. You don't need to protect him from getting hurt."

You just stare. You don't even fathom the point she's trying to make. "Pardon?" Your word is clipped; it takes everything you have just to get it out.

"I know you feel bad for him, being all locked up here," she says gently, "but really, you don't need to keep this farce going because of old feelings."

Your wand is pointed at her before you really have a chance to process your own movement. "Don't," you tell her, your voice shaking and strong. "Don't ever try and tell me that we're not _real_. I have loved him since we were children and I will love him for the rest of my life and _you _will not say another thing about it!" You don't even notice your voice getting louder; it isn't until you're finished that you realize you're shouting.

And then you pocket your wand and you look away and you mumble an apology. She just gapes at you, her brown eyes blank, and you glance at her for a moment. "I'm sorry," you repeat, and your frown is practically audible. Your words get stronger as you continue, desperate for her to understand. "But you are _wrong_. I don't know where you're getting this idea that we aren't something for you to take seriously but we _are._"

She's still staring when you leave. You don't waste a minute in going upstairs and finding Sirius; he's singing to an old record and for a second he's the sixteen year old boy with a beautiful future that you fell in love with and he looks at you and smiles and he's older now, and weary, and his future was taken from him but he's still yours.

You manage a shaky smile and his face falls. "What happened?" he asks slowly, and you shake your head and you go to him and then you're all wrapped up in his arms and you feel a little bit better.

She thinks this isn't significant, when you know he's your whole heart.

You apologize to her again the next morning, for pulling your wand out on her, and she hugs you and says that she's sorry, and leaves it at that. You don't need any more details. You watch carefully, and sometimes you forget to stop looking at him, and the year goes by.

One night you come home, but it is not home anymore, because Sirius is not there and never will be again, and she's waiting for the group to come back. _The kids are safe_, you tell yourself, _that was what the goal was. The kids are safe._ You put on a brave face for her and the rest of the Order members who stayed behind.

She doesn't buy it. "What happened?" she asks softly, and someone else explains, and no one is looking at you. You sit down slowly, and the room clears out as the evening goes by, but she stays. You're feeling numb, empty. You hadn't fully realized how much you needed to have him back until you've lost him again.

The thought breaks you, and your shoulders shake with sobs, and she holds you and cries with you and you hate yourself a little bit for ever hating her at all.


End file.
